Bloggers twist Obama's words

There's a new anti- Obama story-line whipping through cyberspace at the speed of stupid.

Put simply, some internet nitwits say Obama's comment that his --white grandmother who made racist remarks and was fearful of blacks ---was a "typical white person" just proves he can't stop alienating white voters. Never mind that Obama's point, made casually yesterday on a Philadelphia radio show, was to emphasize the important truth that whites, including his elderly grandmother, are slowly winning the fight to purge their hearts of poisonous prejudices.

That message was swiftly discarded as a gaggle of bloggers and correspondents -whose collective contribution to an honest national dialogue about race has been nil--pounced." Barack Obama basically called all white people racist," wrote blogger/radio show host Taylor Marsh on the Huffington Post, neatly avoiding the inconvenient fact

that such a libel from the bi-racial candidate would include ( or half -include ) himself

Other political Websites echoed Marsh's sentiment ---Oooh! He said "white person "!

Now he can't be President ! ---and conservatives dutifully added it to their talking points. Once again Obama, having scaled political heights undreamed of 90 days ago

finds himself bedeviled by his most formidable adversary: a bored and biased press

corps that refuses to recognize or report race relations the way Americans actually live it. Obama forecast this problem Tuesday in his groundbreaking race relations speech,

noting the media " has scoured every exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polerization, not just interms of white and black, but black and brown as well. "



I saw the phenomenon up close in South Carolina, Obama supporters chanted, " It's

not about race " but hundreds of reporters ---many of whom had never set foot in the

state be fore ---pecked at their keyboards and told America the primary was racially divided ------- Were they k idding ? In South Carolina, Obama won 43 out of 46 counties : the richest, the poorest and basically everything in between --including a majority of white voters under 30. Of course that didn't stop the spin. Nor have the anti- Obama writers explained how he won so many votes in places like Iowa, Alaska,Vermont and Wyoming, where pretty much the only voters are white. The default explamation ----that those states somehow don't count---doesn't make much sense. Obama's daring attempt to initiate a frank national dialogue about race ---a challenge Hillary Clinton and John McClain seem unlikely to meet runs the risk of foundering on the rocky shore of smug ignorance and indifferance

It's odd that the same reporters and pundits who give short shrift to topics like housing segregation,discrimination and racial disparities in credit and health have become experts on race relations. Ridiculous ! All they're doing is seizing on non issues like Obama's remark to breathe life into a story line of racial division in the presidential race, even where it doesn't exist.

Their confidently pessimistic predictions about white voters abandoning Obama en masse have been wrong ever since they failed to predict Obama's Iowa win or the the stunning string of victories that followed. When the lull in primaries ends next month, voters will go about the business of proving the so-called experts wrong once again. Adapted from nydailynews ---and ERROL Louis page 8

posted by davidsradiotv2000